The future's in our hands - let's grab it and go for it!

What's important about Tees Pride is that it really must be the people's campaign - and that is why I am so pleased the Evening Gazette, as a newspaper with its roots firmly in our local community, is the driving force behind it.

What's important about Tees Pride is that it really must be the people's campaign - and that is why I am so pleased the Evening Gazette, as a newspaper with its roots firmly in our local community, is the driving force behind it.

Of course, it's important local organisations and agencies give it their support, but the most important aspect of Tees Pride is that it offers the 600,000 people who live and work in the Tees Valley the chance to become involved in building a better future for all of us.

I see Tees Pride as a very encouraging indication of the increasing awareness throughout the Tees Valley that our future is very much in our own hands.

It was that recognition which sowed the seeds of an idea that has now become the Tees Valley Partnership, bringing together every sector - private, public and voluntary - to develop a new vision for our area and making sure that it happens.

Of course, it is right that we take pride in the past - of our tremendous industrial heritage when we saw this area become one of the powerhouses of the nation, indeed the world.

At the same time I am proud that we are now recognising that those industries which were at the heart of our economic success over the past 200 years, will not alone be able to deliver our hopes for the future.

I believe we can take pride in what we have achieved already. We now have a vision of the way forward - of how we can deliver the new jobs and investment in the industries of the future, raise the aspirations of our young people and create a better environment. The real challenge is making it happen - and that depends on all of us.

The partnership has now drawn up an action plan for the next three years when we will be responsible for investing #50m in a range of projects that I believe will help to transform the lives of the entire community.

We also have the recently established Urban Regeneration Company, charged with persuading national and international investors that the Tees Valley is an area with a bright future.

It is an indication of the pride people have about being from this area that an individual such as a Peter Middleton, a businessman with an international reputation, is prepared to give his time and effort freely to make the URC a success.

There are many other good people from many different walks of life who are now involved, through initiatives such as the partnership and the URC, and I believe it is because they feel proud of our area and are committed to its future.

But individuals, however powerful, however influential, however talented, cannot do it alone. We hear a great deal nowadays about what is termed social exclusion - where people feel that they have no control, no stake and no influence over their futures.

Tees Pride is a challenge to us all to make sure we do not let that happen - that we say to the whole community, this really is your future, you have an opportunity, indeed I would argue, a responsibility, to get involved.